


One Last Time And Nevermore

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [133]
Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 09:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17895872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: A few days after saying his final goodbye to Alan, Jesse realizes that it wasn't as final as he thought it would be - or maybe it was too much, and that's why it's hurting so bad now.





	One Last Time And Nevermore

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
> Written for [The Clash of the Writing Titans #9](https://www.landedifandom.net/tag/cow-t-9/), [Week 2](https://www.landedifandom.net/cowt9-week2/), Mission 2, prompt: rain and snow (and I added a gazillion other weather circumstances just because I could, to be honest).  
> Also, this story was originally inspired by another prompt I saw during another challenge - the White Night, if I'm not mistaken. The prompt was "seven stages of grief". So yeah, now you know what this story's about.

1\. Dead twice, mourned twice

The storm comes unexpected, sudden and violent right from the start, and as he sits on the bed with his knees gathered to his chest and his eyes fixed on the rain pummeling against the windowpane Jesse thinks it’s still winter and it was silly of him to think spring would come sooner just because he needed it. Just as it was silly of him to think the pain would be gone by now, just because for one or a few days he had finally managed to wake up without feeling sick.

The boys are all still around the house – he knows because he can hear them speak on the other side of the door. Blaine’s talking with his agent, Jesse can listen to what he’s saying quite clearly because he’s in his studio, right next to the bedroom. He’s telling her she has to wait for a few more weeks before booking some new auditions for him. Jesse doesn’t know exactly what she’s answering him, but by the number of times Blaine had to apologize over the last ten minutes he guesses she must be quite upset.

He understands her point of view, obviously. Pain has made him numb to a variety of things but he can still understand how people work, how life works, and that no matter the amount of pain you might feel in a specific moment, life keeps going on, like the storm raging outside. 

He can’t find it in himself to share it, though. Not at the moment. He knows if he were a good person he should go to Blaine, shake him by his shoulders and tell him “stop playing nanny to me, get out of this house, get to work!”, but the truth is he still needs someone to play nanny to him. He needs all of these people temporarily living in this house to keep playing nanny to him. At least for a little longer.

Leo and Adam are playing videogames in the sitting room. They’re not wearing headphones and the noises coming from the game – shooting and shouting and the random compulsory explosion –, though not enough to cancel out the sound of the pouring rain, keep him company. They know, that’s why they leave the sound on.

Sometimes they comment on what’s happening on the screen, sometimes they laugh, sometimes they curse. They sound alive and they sound good, and a part of Jesse wishes he could feel better to just leave this bed and drag himself to them, let himself fall on the couch between them and watch them play, enjoying the warmth of their bodies, hoping that’s enough to melt his skin enough for him to remember he isn’t dead either. That he’s alive too.

Cody’s singing softly, muttering under his breath, somewhere in the other bedroom. He usually does it while he’s drawing, headphones on, tilting his head right and left, fingertips black with charcoal. Jesse can picture him easily as he sketches out the pictures the music’s suggesting to his mind while he sucks on a chocolate-and-vanilla lollipop. The color of his cheeks, the light in the back of his eyes, the curve of his lips as he smiles, satisfied with the result.

All of them are free, now. What was inhabiting them has mostly disappeared. Sometimes one of them will come up with the weirdest memory, or they would share with him an inside joke they couldn’t possibly know anything about and yet they do, but for the majority of time Alan’s just gone.

Not from inside him, though.

He felt good the day after saying goodbye. He could still feel the touch of his fingers over his skin, he could smell his scent off himself, and when he went to the graveyard and swung with the trees to the sound of the wind he felt like he could take on everything, the whole world. And for a few days, it lasted.

But that was the problem with having another chance to say goodbye – after it was done, it felt like losing him all over again. Lost to life the first time, lost from inside the people who still held some particles of him trapped into their very being the second time. Dead twice. Mourned twice. Except now he’s mourning alone, because what happened helped Blaine get over the loss of his best friend, but wasn’t enough for Jesse to get over it too.

He knows these things take time – much as it takes time for storms to pass, clouds to dissipate and streets and sidewalks to dry up after it stopped raining.

He just wishes the process could be faster. And didn’t have to hurt so.

2\. In the eye of storm you’ll see a lonely dove – or, Cody

They’re calling it Malachy – the hurricane that’s hitting Ohio right now. It’s been raining for days, more violently by the second, and now, all of a sudden, it just stopped, and it’s like the drowning earth could finally emerge for a little while, and take a breather.

Jesse wishes he could do the same. This sudden, quiet calm feels unreal, his body reads it as fake and can’t quite adjust to it.

He feels more or less the same in his heart, right now. He looks at the world outside the window, the sunlight, the clear blue sky, absolutely no wind whatsoever, and it’s like the storm was never there to begin with, only the eerie absence of any birds singing gives away that things are not as fine as they look like.

He’s going through a series of calm moments. The storm isn’t raging in his heart right now. But the eerie void of feelings filling him up (or emptying him out) is a clear sign that nothing’s fine yet. It’s just a break from pain. Like all breaks, it hurts too.

“You look pensive, these days.”

Jesse turns around to see Cody smiling kindly at him, his arms crossed behind his back like a nice little kid. He’s wearing denim shorts and a simple white tank top and he looks as tasty and refreshing as orange juice. 

He wishes he was thirsty enough to take a sip.

“Do I?” he asks, scooting over to make some room for him on the side of the bed.

“Yeah,” Cody answers, sitting next to him, and then he chuckles, covering his mouth with his hands. “Leo used a different word, though.”

“Which one?”

“Depressed.”

Jesse stretches his lips in a thin smile. “Do you think I’m depressed?”

“I think you’re pensive,” Cody shrugs, “That’s why I used that word and not Leo’s. I think you’re deeply immersed in thoughts. Not pleasant ones, though.”

“Isn’t that more or less the same as being depressed?”

“No,” Cody’s voice sounds firm, his denial final, “I think there are things that can’t be _more or less_ the same, so either they’re equal or they aren’t.”

“And these aren’t.”

“No,” Cody shakes his head, “These aren’t.”

“Okay,” Jesse nods, deciding he will let Cody’s rationality decide for him, “I’m pensive, then.”

“Are you thinking about him?”

Cody’s a blunt person. One would never think it judging by his sweet face and the formal education that always guides his actions, but when he feels free to speak, he always says things as they are, and not how people would prefer to hear about them.

Jesse appreciates that of him. It reminds him of Alan.

“Yes,” he answers with the same straightforwardness, “I’m hurting.”

“You miss him.”

“Always. But that’s not the point,” he sighs, half-lying down on the bed, propped up on his elbows, “It’s that I can’t...” he looks down and then shakes his head, trying to find the right words for it, “Sometimes I can’t believe it happened. The thing with you all and what it mattered and what caused it… and even before, his death, and losing him… it feels like today,” he points at the world outside, so shiny and bright, with a movement of his chin, “Fake. I keep thinking maybe he’ll pass through that door, today. He’ll tell me, what are you doing at Blaine’s? I was expecting you home. And I’d say...” he bites at his bottom lip as he feels it quiver, “What would I say?”

Cody looks at him all the while, batting his long eyelashes and never interrupting him. He lets him finish, and then he moves closer, placing a soft kiss on his cheek. “You’d say _welcome back_ , and it would be okay,” he answers.

But Jesse doesn’t agree with that. It wouldn’t be okay. And it’s not okay to think about it in these terms, because Alan’s dead, and he’s never coming back, and that is a sentence he will never have the chance to say.

3\. Like believers love God incarnate – or, Leo

He wakes up angry after a few hours of messy, confusing, painful dreams. Alan was there, then he was gone. He had his own face and then a different one. He was lively and tan and then purple and green, he was angry, then sad, he scolded him because he thought too much about him and then hit him in his face because he wasn’t thinking about him enough, what about all these people, he said screaming, all these people you pretend are me? You like their faces, you like their lips, the taste of their kisses? You like how they touch you, you enjoy the way they fuck you, was I so easily replaceable that you just needed the excuse of my organs being passed around to complete strangers to get over me?

In the dream, he tried to scream. No, it’s not true, I haven’t gotten over you, I will never get over you. But not a single sound escaped his lips. Alan kept appearing and disappearing and Jesse kept chasing him and begging him to come back, but nothing could stop him. He kept flashing in and out of existence, like the light of a lighthouse, until Jesse was awake, and then he was no more.

When he opened his eyes, the storm was raging outside the window. The calm, still weather of the day before seemed like a distant memory, yet another dream. And he got angry, all of a sudden. He growled and grabbed the pillow and he threw it away, against the wall, and when the sound that pillow made, that soft thudding noise, faded out like it never existed, he went for something heavier, something louder. He grabbed the lamp on his nightstand and crashed it. It rained ceramic for a second, then that sound was over too and Jesse wanted more, so he screamed. He screamed and crashed everything he could put his hands on, the phone, the alarm clock, the drawers of both nightstands. He grabs his shoes and threw them against the walls, he grabbed his clothes and threw them on the ground, and when he had nothing else to throw he threw himself, banging his head against the door, his palms against the wooden door frame, his feet against the ground, and he screamed louder, louder, louder, hoping now he could hear him, that Alan could _hear_ him, that he could listen to his pain and feel guilty about it.

That’s when Leo came. He slammed the door open and held him in his arms, screaming louder than him, “Jesse, for fuck’s sake!”, and Jesse clung to him as he would’ve clung to a wooden plank while lost in the middle of the ocean, and he kept screaming too, I hate him, he said, I hate that he left me, I hate he isn’t here anymore, I hate that he gave me you and then took away from you what made you him to my eyes, I hate he came back, that he had to say goodbye, I hate that I could feel him one last time and nevermore, I hate that I ever met you, that he was ever part of my life, if this pain is all that I can have left of him I regret ever falling in love with him.

He kept screaming for what felt like hours, surrounded by the ruins of his bedroom. Leo held him silently and patiently through it, one hand on his nape, the other arm firmly wrapped around his shoulders.

He’s still holding him like that, now. The storm is still furious outside as it is inside Jesse’s heart, but the wind has stopped roaring and Jesse feels still too.

“Please don’t say that,” Leo murmurs against his temple, his lips moving slowly, brushing against his skin, warm and dry and delicate, while Jesse wishes they could rest on his own, silence the storm inside as they would silence his words. “What happened brought us together. You still have all of us and we love you like believers love fucking God incarnate,” he squeezes him tight, cutting his breath, and Jesse thinks yes, yes, squeeze the life out of me, suffocate me, I wanna die hearing you say you love me, I want that to be the last thing these ears will hear. But Leo softens his grip and withdraws a little, cupping his face in his hands and looking at him, right into his eyes. “Why are you so angry?” he asks him.

And Jesse asks the same question to himself. And the empty space inside him echoes of the answer he didn’t want to give himself.

Because I want the pain to stop, but I feel like that would mean forgetting about him.

A truth he can’t escape from. And now he knows.

4\. I don’t wanna be the one to say goodbye, but I will, I will, I will

The temperature drops all of a sudden and in the blink of an eye there’s a blizzard out the window. The world is pitch black and cold seeps through the walls, turning his limbs into ice.

He has asked to be left alone. He doesn’t want to see any of the guys. When he said that, all of them looked like he had shot them through the heart. Cody’s blue eyes borne all the disappointment they used to bear when they were Alan’s and he made a stupid mistake he could’ve easily avoided if he had just stopped to think before acting. Adam backed away and frowned, announcing he would go back home for a few days, as he usually does when Jesse does something he can’t understand and that unbearably annoys him for that reason. Blaine looked hurt in that deep, wordless way that always makes Jesse feel guilty and Leo got closer, touched his shoulder gently and whispered to him, “is it because of me, because of what I told you?”.

Jesse shook his head. “No, it has nothing to do with you,” he said, “With any of you.”

And everything to do with him. With Alan and him.

It feels calming to watch the crazy whirlwinds agitate the damp, heavy snow outside. Jesse closes his eyes and passes all that he feels to the weather, all the deep, violent, contrasting emotions agitating his soul. He breathes in and out and pushes the anger out first. Leave me, he thinks, and he begs the wind to take it away and disperse it as it would do with the ashes of a cremated body. 

Then it’s sadness, the next evil in his own personal Pandora’s box. He pushes it out one tear after the other and begs the snow to turn them into ice too, and make them disappear in the forming whiteness outside. Make those tears unrecognizable, so that I could never tell if I truly cried them or not.

Then it’s time to let go of longing and melancholia, of all the little shards of Alan’s presence that are still plunged in his flesh and all the soft parts of his body. Memories, dreams, the physical feeling connected to each of these things, he begs the rain to wash them away from his body as it would do with dirt. He wants to be cleansed from all this – it brings nothing to him but pain, and he wants to get rid of it.

It’s the next thing he lets go of – pain. His heart is sore, he can’t take it any more. He begs the night to numb it down and suffocate it like it suffocates the light. He doesn’t wanna see it anymore, that light – it’s too bright, it burns him, it hurts him more than it benefits him. Alan was the light and if he can’t have it anymore then he prefers the sun to be coated in black paint, to stop shining, to plunge the world into complete, eternal darkness. 

Finally, he lets go of love. He takes all that makes his heart swell, all that makes his soul soar higher than the sky, all that makes his skin tingle, his lips twitch in an unexpected smile, all that gives him pleasure, all that lifts his spirit, and begs the earth to cover it forever, deep enough that not even a flood would bring it back to the surface ever again.

He’s done with this. He’s done with hoping, with pretending one day his wound’s going to heal, that someday he will be able to live with the idea that Alan will never be with him again, that he’s never going to touch him, that he’s never going to see him smile like he used to.

There’s just one way he can survive this, and it’s pushing it all out and deliver himself from it. So he does that. He takes everything and frees himself.

And once he’s done, once he’s free, he realizes that now he’s empty.

5\. The breach in the wall – or, Blaine

The blizzard lasted only a few hours. It left the earth completely covered in icy white, leaves and grass turned into fragile crystal, and locked life inside the houses. No one wanders the streets outside, schools are closed and so are supermarkets and shops, with the only exception of Old Boyce’s hot dog stand, which Jesse could see at the farthest corner of the street through the window of his bedroom. Such a useless display of vital strength, he thought as Blaine came into the room to gather him from the bed around noon. Doesn’t Old Boyce know? Hasn’t he realized, in all the years he’s lived upon this Earth, that it is all useless? That it makes no sense to put a thousand scarves, two coats and three pairs of gloves on to walk out in a dead world, hoping to sell flaccid hot dogs to the ghosts roaming through the street? Doesn’t he know that there’s no point in making an effort, in even moving?, because life always ends the same way for everyone, and it wouldn’t even be that bad if that didn’t mean that someone had to go before everyone else?

“Jesse,” Blaine speaks softly to him, holding him close to his chest, sharing his warmth with him, “You’re freezing cold. Did you even use the blanket, tonight?”

No, he didn’t. He didn’t even feel the cold. He laid down on the bed, eyes out the window, fixed on the whirling snow, and he didn’t move. He didn’t think. He’d have stopped breathing if he could’ve.

He doesn’t even feel like answering. He can only think he had asked to be left alone but here Blaine is, trying to pick him up and obtain some sort of sign from him. But Jesse’s body just isn’t interested in acting. There’s nothing inside him anymore, the land outside is a white slate and so is the land inside. Empty, blinding, all-consuming white. His soul is at peace. There is no pain because there is nothing at all.

“You have to eat something.” Blaine picks him up and wraps a blanket around his shoulders. Jesse feels the change in temperature and he would like to have a will for a second to refuse it. He doesn’t want to warm up. He wants to cool down. He wants to turn to ice, to stone. Only then he will be safe.

“God, at least let me draw you a warm bath.”

Unresponsive, Jesse keeps looking out the window. White outside. White inside. The pulsing red shade of suffering gone, forgotten.

“Alright,” Blaine says, pulling him up in his arms, “You don’t want to agree to it? Then I’ll make you.”

Jesse doesn’t protest – it would make no sense. A hundred thousand warm baths wouldn’t be enough to defrost him. Blaine can try, if he wants. Jesse won’t stop him. He won’t do anything.

Blaine drags him to the bath and sits him down on a stool next to the sink, making sure his back is propped up against the wall. Wise move, it shows he learned the ropes of taking care of desperate people the first time Jesse lost Alan. He knows he would simply let himself fall to the ground if there wasn’t something else, solid enough, to hold him up. 

Jesse watches him move quickly around the bath. He mixes hot and cold water until the temperature’s satisfactory, he plugs the bathtub and waits for it to fill up. He dissolves some bath salts and bath foam in it, now the whole room smells of cinnamon and rose petals, and then turns back towards him. He knows Jesse isn’t going to undress by himself, so he sighs and comes closer. “I’ll take care of your clothes,” he whispers, “If it’s alright.” If Jesse could feel something at all, he would certainly find his kindness touching. But as it is, he has no feelings for it. If Blaine did the same thing roughly, he would feel the same kind of nothing towards it.

Blaine helps him keep his arms up and takes off his t-shirt. Then he holds him up in his arms to get rid of his pants and underpants. Jesse’s heavy dead weight must be hard to bear, but he bears it nonetheless because that’s what Blaine is, a bearer. He takes pain and suffering upon himself and turns that negative energy into the strength he needs to support the people in need. Jesse was never able to do that. Even before, with Alan. Alan was the supporter. Jesse always let him carry all weights for the both of them. Maybe that’s why he’s dead now. Maybe that’s why they both are.

After he stripped him naked, Blaine gently helps him dive into the bathtub. Jesse sits at the bottom of it, his back against the curved edge, his head tilted to the side, reclined over his shoulder like the one of a sleeping swan. Jesse has no idea what effect he was expecting the warm water would have over him, but whatever it was it clearly doesn’t happen. He keeps sitting there, motionless, his internal switch turned off, dead to the world.

Now Blaine could surrender and stop, but he’s a fighter and nothing tears him down. So, instead of picking him up and out of the tub, drying him up and put him back to bed, he stands up and undresses himself. He discards his clothes on the floor, something Jesse knows he usually would prefer dying than doing, and gets into the tub with him, carefully placing himself so that he doesn’t crush him nor weigh down on him.

Then he gathers him in his arms and starts rubbing him.

The touch of his hot fingers against his cold skin unwillingly tears a response out of him. The switch gets turned on and Jesse desperately tries to switch it off right away, but he doesn’t manage. He whimpers as Blaine’s hands stroke his shoulders, his neck, his hips, bringing warmth back to all the different parts of him that had settled for icy cold. 

“No...” he whispers softly, turning his face away to avoid Blaine’s lips as they dangerously come closer to his own, “Don’t. I don’t want to.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Even so. I can’t bear to see you like this.” Blaine holds his chin between his thumb and index finger and makes him look back towards him. “Let me kiss you.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“I want to prove you wrong.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“Show me, then.”

The first feeling since he pushed everything out comes back with the piercing strength of thunder. It’s rage. How dares him. How dares him presume to know what goes on in his mind and in his heart? How dares him insist that he doesn’t want what he says he wants?

It’s a spark but it’s there. Something alive inside him, something that makes him _feel_. Blaine sees it, the breach in the wall, and charges through it, as he knows how to do. In an instant his lips are on Jesse’s, and Jesse is biting at him, but that doesn’t stop him. He kisses him forcefully, like Alan used to?, maybe, but there’s a different quality to it, something that’s only Blaine’s, something Jesse hadn’t tasted yet. A pure, undiluted willpower that overcomes him and takes his breath away.

“Stop,” he gasps, breaking the kiss as his body unconsciously gets closer to Blaine’s, searching for more, blinded by wanting, “Stop, don’t.”

“Let me,” Blaine murmurs against his skin, his lips hot and wet drawing lines on his neck, “I want you to feel it.”

“No,” Jesse throws his head back and arches his spine as Blaine’s body comes in full contact with his own, naked, wet skin against naked, wet skin, “I don’t wanna feel anything.”

“I don’t care,” Blaine answers, and he’s got the voice of the grand occasions, the one he uses when he’s about to deal him a blow that’s going to make him bend over with pain, “To live is to feel, kitten. And you’re still alive.”

And as a matter of fact, pain is the second thing that comes back to him, and like overflowing water fills him up instantly. Every part of him suddenly aches as bad as though pain had never left him. He called him _kitten_ , and he did it because he knew it would hurt. Because he knew the only way to bring him back would be to ignite the pain once again. Set it on fire and let it consume him.

Jesse bites at his inner cheek, clinging to him so hard he scratches his shoulders with his nails. Wheezing, pain suffocating him, he lets out a broken sob and starts crying loudly while Blaine holds him and moves against him, the water spluttering around them, dripping on the tiled floor, forming little puddles Blaine will be careful not to let him slip on once they’re out, because he’s a bearer, a fighter, a caretaker and the only one that, today, could prevent Jesse from losing himself forever.

And Jesse holds onto him for dear life, and even though life is painful he keeps holding on to that too, finally realizing there might be no point in living, but there sure is a point in suffering, and that’s remembering, and he never, never wants to forget.

6\. When it feels like nothing else matters, will you put your arms around me – or, Adam

The snow doesn’t last long, unfortunately. Jesse wakes up in the middle of the night, tangled up between Leo’s and Blaine’s arms and with Cody’s head upon his knees, because the sound of the rain seems to be calling him. It feels dangerously close to a human voice, even though he knows it’s impossible.

He stands up from the bed, careful not to wake anyone up, and walks towards the window, looking out. The world is dark and wet and the snow is melting off in muddy rivers running down the streets towards the next sewer opening. It’s a sad idea, that something as pure and beautiful had to transform in something so ugly and go back to the earth like that. But after all isn’t it the same for people? After you die, don’t you too turn into something ugly and then disappear? And when the earth takes you back into its womb, that’s when you’re allowed to rest. And what you were and what you became after you died don’t mean anything anymore. You’re just a memory, something that’s been left behind, for others to protect. And you’re at peace. And you’re safe.

The storm is over but it’s still raining, and Jesse wants to feel the rain on his skin. Is that how it’s always going to be?, he wonders as he takes off his shoes and walks outside, stopping halfway through the driveway and looking up, letting the rain soak him up, penetrate in his flesh and bones through his skin. Is it going to be this painful forever? Won’t it ever stop? If no one here allows me to let go of what I feel, if they _want_ me to feel, then am I condemned to feel pain for as long as I’m alive?

It’s a scary question with an answer he’s not sure he wants to hear. He closes his eyes and lets the sky rain in cold, heavy drops upon him. If it’s true that, once dead, we go back to the earth, and if it’s true that everything belongs to the earth, the clouds, the sky, everything we can see with our eyes and feel with our hands, then he wants this rain to fill him up. He wants it inside, because if this comes from the earth, the same place Alan disappeared into, then a part of Alan is captured still in these pearly drops, and he can have him back. And if it’s true that, running along his body, these drops will take part of him with themselves as they go back to the earth, he wants them to do it, he wants them to take all that they can from him, because as they go back to Alan they will bring some of him with themselves, and Alan and him will be together again.

“You’re going to get a fever if you keep standing in the rain like that,” Adam says, his voice piercing a hole through the black shroud of the night and the cold mist of the rain.

Jesse opens his eyes and looks at him. He’s soaking wet, like him, and he looks like he ran from home all the way here without even thinking about fetching an umbrella first. “You too,” he says.

Adam gets closer. As always, Jesse doesn’t know how to deal with him. Adam’s different than the others. There’s something inside him that belongs to Alan in a whole different way. Every time Jesse thinks Alan’s heart’s still beating inside Adam’s chest he feels such a breaking pain he can hardly breathe, and at the same time to rest his ear against Adam’s chest and _feel_ that beating fills him up with so much joy he can hardly contain it.

“I forgot to put my raincoat on,” he says. 

Jesse swallows, raising a hand to touch his wet cheek. His blonde hair, heavy with water, seem a deeper color than it usually his, and his eyelashes, wet too, seem thicker and longer. His brown eyes, so deep, are alight with a fire Jesse can’t even look at without feeling like burning himself. “Were you so eager to come back?”

“I needed to see you. No,” Adam turns his head slightly, pressing his lips against the palm of Jesse’s hand, “I _had_ to. I can’t stay away more than a day.”

Jesse feels his own heart crumple together like a piece of paper held tight in a fist, and gets closer to him, resting his forehead against the curve of his shoulder. “Why do you think that is?” he asks weakly, and then, in an even lower voice, “You think it’s still because of him…?”

Adam raises both arms and wraps them around his shoulders, hugging him tightly. “No, Jess,” he answers honestly, “I _know_ it’s just because I’m madly in love with you.”

“That’s silly,” Jesse lets out a broken half-laughter, shaking his head, “You barely even know me.”

“I don’t need to know you to know that I love you,” Adam insists, squeezing him harder, “I feel it. I love everything about you. Your pain and your rage, your highs and your lows. The way you shut the world off when you don’t feel like facing it. The way you open up for comfort when you feel it’s safe to receive it.”

“You get angry at me when I’m in pain,” Jesse shakes his head again, “You get angry when I do something disappointing and push you away. And when you get angry, you leave. How is that love?”

“It is love,” Adam covers his neck and cheeks in wet kisses, holding him as though he had to anchor him to the earth in the middle of a hurricane, “I only leave when my heart’s about to break because I hate seeing you like this. I would like to be enough to make you happy. But I will never be, will I?”

“Nothing ever will.”

“And yet I wanna keep on trying,” his lips rest on Jesse’s, and Jesse wants this kiss like he wants the pain to stop, with the same desperate abandon, “I’ll keep on trying until I manage, Jess, I promise.”

“And what if you never manage?”

The question gives Adam pause for a little while. Jesse watches him withdraw slightly and look at him, as if trying to crack the puzzle that he just turned into for him. Then he smiles, and the curve of his lips is kissable, and Jesse kisses him, and everything is pain, and pain feels so good Jesse only wants more of it. 

“I would still keep on trying,” Adam finally answers, holding him close again, “Because I know no other way to be with you, and I wanna keep being with you. No matter what.”

All around them, the rain keeps falling. Deaf to any other sound of the world, Jesse listens to its shaky song, a lullaby that allows his heart to rest for a while.

When Adam picks him up from the ground and gets him back inside, he barely even notices.

7\. But what have I, if I have no love? I am a waste

The first thing he does when he wakes up, it’s sneezing.

“Of course he got a cold,” Adam rolls his eyes and stands up from where he was sitting, on the edge of the bed, next to Blaine. Leo and Cody are doing the same thing, sitting quietly, on the other side of the bed. Jesse thinks maybe they were waiting for him to wake up, and he wonders why.

“What happened…?” he asks confusedly, sitting up. He feels weak and all his bones ache as they were about to fracture into a million pieces.

“You caught a vicious fever, love,” Blaine smiles gently and tidies the blankets around him. They are at least a million, and they weigh on his legs, but they’re pleasantly warm, Jesse must admit. “You were asleep for more or less three days.”

“Three days…?” Jesse looks at him with eyes wide open, and then he turns to look at Leo and Cody to make sure he understood correctly. “Three days?”

“You didn’t eat and you never woke up once,” Cody shakes his pretty head.

“You have no idea the mess you made in this bed,” Leo adds with such a disgusted grimace on his face that, even if Jesse had no idea about it, he would picture it pretty well by just seeing it. “But now you feel better. Your temperature has gone down.”

“But you caught a cold, because you’re stupid,” Adam insists, bumping him on his head, “How long did you stand under the rain, exactly?”

“I don’t know...” Jesse shakes his head, confusedly. He has only vague memories of the rain calling to him, drawing him out of the house. “An hour or something?”

“Jesus...” Adam looks up at the ceiling as if asking for the help of some deity hidden behind it. “I’ll go make some tea. We all need it.”

“Uh, I can bake some cookies,” Leo instantly offers, jumping off the bed.

“Isn’t it a little late to start baking cookies now…?” Cody inquires, tilting his head to the side, “Let’s just eat some chocolate snacks. I’ll fetch a few,” he nods, following Leo into the kitchen.

Jesse turns back to Blaine, blinking slowly, and finds him smiling affectionately, completely unperturbed by the scene. “I’m… sorry?” he tries, hiding between his shoulders.

Blaine throws his head back and bursts into laughing. “You should be, Jesse,” he says, patting him on his head, “But you’re better now, and hopefully the worst is over.”

Jesse looks down, unsure about that. “Is it, really?” he asks in a little voice.

Blaine scoffs a short laughter and leans in, kissing him on his forehead. “I have no way of really knowing, love,” he answers honestly, “I’ve just got to hope for it. There’s nothing else I can do.” Then he stands up too, stretching his limbs as though he had spent sitting there the majority of his time in the last few days – which he probably did. “I’ll go check on those three madmen, make sure they at least don’t set my house on fire,” he says, before disappearing through the door, “You take your time and join us when you’re ready.”

Jesse watches him go and makes sure he’s truly gone before standing up from the bed and walking towards the window. The world outside looks completely different than it was when he closed his eyes last time. There’s a nice sun, the sky is clear, the streets and sidewalks are still wet, but they’re drying out. Still no birds singing, but you can feel spring preparing to bloom in the air, and it’s somewhat exciting.

His body still aches, and so does his heart. The landscape of his soul is as stormy as it was before, but he can maybe see the line of the horizon a little clearer, now. He has to accept that pain is part of him, now, that there’s no way to make it stop. The only thing he can do is to find a way to live with it, knowing that feeling pain means he’s alive, that he’s capable of love and that he will always remember why, because loving like that, no matter for how short a while, was worth it, and will always be.

He lets out a little smile, and that’s kind of painful too.

But it’s also kind of sweet.

_But I'll meet you at the Delta_  
_Where the rivers run into the sea_  
_And I'll meet you at the Delta_  
_What's behind, I can’t clearly see_  
_That beyond, that's beyond me_


End file.
